The War and Russian Social-Democracy¶
Core Argument¶
The War and Russian Social-Democracy
This chapter argues that the European war, long prepared by the ruling classes, is an imperialist war in its essential character. Its real content is the seizure of territory, the ruining of commercial competitors, the distraction of workers from their own internal political crises, the stultification of the masses with nationalism, and the weakening of the revolutionary proletariat. Social-Democracy must therefore expose the false ‘patriotic’ justifications advanced by both belligerent blocs. The German bourgeoisie, allied with tsarism, wages a robber campaign against Serbia and the freer countries; the British and French bourgeoisie, having financed tsarist reaction, seek German colonies and the ruining of a faster-developing rival. Both sides are equally brutal. The only genuine liberation war is civil war against the bourgeoisie of all countries.
The socialist parties of the leading European countries have betrayed socialism. Most leaders of the Second International substituted nationalism for socialism, voting war credits, joining bourgeois governments, and repeating chauvinist slogans. The German Social-Democrats bear primary responsibility: their claim to be fighting tsarism is sophistry, for the war actually aids tsarism against revolution in Russia. The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, by contrast, refused war credits, walked out of the Duma, and is publishing illegal manifestos against the war. The Second International’s collapse is the collapse of opportunism, which denied socialist revolution, rejected civil war, preached class collaboration, and fetishised bourgeois legality. A decisive break with opportunism is necessary. The immediate slogan of a republican United States of Europe is meaningless without the revolutionary overthrow of the German, Austrian and Russian monarchies. In advanced countries, the war places socialist revolution on the order of the day. The only correct proletarian slogan is the conversion of the imperialist war into civil war, following the Basel Resolution.
The text polemicises sharply against Kautsky’s claim that differences between belligerent socialist parties are not fundamental, and that unity of principles remains. This is a smug and vulgar departure from the truth. Arguments for participating in the war on the basis of ‘defence of the fatherland’ are likened to arguments for participating in an anti-Jewish pogrom. The war, as a historical crisis, has aggravated deep antagonisms and exposed the bankruptcy of the Second International, which has been overcome by opportunism. Three currents now exist in international socialism: chauvinists (opportunists), consistent opponents of opportunism who pursue revolutionary work towards civil war, and confused vacillating people who justify opportunism. Only a decisive break and split with the chauvinists, and a policy rejecting war credits, ‘defence of the fatherland’, and submission to wartime laws, can build a genuine socialist International. Such work alone is Party work and Social-Democratic work.